Illogical Geology Part 10

"The Pteropods, among Mollusks, were much larger than the modern species of the tribe. The Trilobites even of the Lower Cambrian comprise species as large as living Crustaceans. The Ostrapods are generally larger than those of recent times."[79]

Again, in speaking of the general character of the Cambrian fossils, he says:

"The types of the early Cambrian are mostly identical with those now represented in existing seas, and although inferior in general as to grade [in the "Phylogenic series"], they bear no marks of imperfect or stunted growth from unfit or foul surroundings." (p. 485.)

The well known Mollusk, _Maclurea magna_, which is so enormously abundant in the Silurian, is often eight inches in diameter, and the astounding Cephalopod genus, _Endoceras_, consisting of twenty species, found only in two divisions of the Lower Silurian, has left sh.e.l.ls over a foot in diameter, and ten or twelve feet long!

Of the fishes of the Devonian we have, among other remarks of a similar character, the following:

"The Dipnoans, or 'Lung-fishes,' were represented by gigantic species called by Newberry _Dinichthys_ and _t.i.tanichthys_, from their size and formidable dental armature.... A still larger species is the _t.i.tanichthys clarki_ of Newberry, in which the head was four feet or more broad, the lower jaw a yard long. This jaw was shaped posteriorly like an oar blade, and anteriorly was turned upward like a sled runner."[80]

One of the ancient Eurypterids from the Old Red Sandstone of Europe has a length of six feet, which is more than three times that of any Crustacean now living. While a gigantic Isopod Crustacean from the same strata had a leg the basal joint of which was three inches long, and three-quarters of an inch through, which is larger than the whole body of any modern species.

The ancient "Horse-tails," "Ground-pines," Ferns and Cycads were trees from 30 to 90 feet high, and their carbonized stems and leaves make up many of our largest and best beds of coal. Compared with them the modern representatives are mere herbs or shrubbery.

Of the gigantic insects of the Devonian and Carboniferous beds we might make similar remarks. Some of the ancient locusts had an expanse of wing of over seven inches; while many of the ancient Dragon-flies had bodies from a foot to sixteen inches long, with wings a foot long and over two feet in spread from tip to tip.

Here is James Geikie's summary of the leading types of the Palaeozoic:

"Many Palaeozoic species were characterized by their large size as compared with species of the same groups that belong to later times.

Thus, some Trilobites and other Crustaceans were larger than any modern species of Crustaceans. The Palaeozoic Amphibians also much exceeded in size any living members of their cla.s.s. Again, the modern club-mosses, which are insignificant plants, either trailing on the ground or never reaching more than two feet in height, were represented by great lepidodendroid trees."

Sternberg, in speaking of some of the frogs which he found in the Permian of Texas, says:

"I found several skulls that measured over a foot from the end of the chin to the distal point of the horns.... I think when alive the frog must have been six feet long."[81]

He mentions another specimen which was "about 10 feet long," the head of which was "about 20 inches in length," with jaws "more powerful than those of an ox."

Of the monstrous Dinosaurs of the Mesozoic rocks one hardly needs to speak.

"They were the most gigantic of terrestrial animals, in some cases reaching a length of 70 or 80 feet, while at the same time they had a height of body and ma.s.siveness of limb that, without evidence from the bones, would have been thought too great for muscle to move."[82]

They abound in both the Old and the New World.

Of the gigantic Mammals of the Tertiary beds of the Western States, it would also be superfluous to speak; their gigantic size is known by every high school pupil, or every one who has visited any important museum in Europe or America.

We may perhaps be reminded again that all the species of these "older"

rocks are extinct species. I have already suggested the grave doubts on this point, regarding the great ma.s.s of the lower forms of life, plant and animal; but we will let that pa.s.s. But let us take some of the "late" Tertiary and Pleistocene mammals, which cannot be distinguished from living species, and how do we fare? It is the same old story; the moderns are degenerate dwarfs.

The hippopotamus (_H. major_) is a good one to start with, for Flower and Lydekker[83] say that it "cannot be specifically distinguished from _H. amphibius_" of Africa. This gigantic brute used to live in the rivers of England and Western Europe. The text-books generally say in "Pliocene times," because, I suppose, no one has the courage to suggest that it lived under the ice of the "Glacial period." We are always pointed to the wool on the rhinoceros and the mammoth as indicating a somewhat cool climate, but the well known amphibious habits of the hippopotamus cannot be so easily disposed of. But if, as I believe, this world never saw a foot of ice at the sea level till the end of the "Pleistocene period," to speak after the current manner, the problem becomes very simple. In that case the time of the Hippopotamus in England was neither earlier nor later than that of the palms and acacias of the "early" Tertiary or Mesozoic rocks, or than that of the mammoth, lion, and hyena of the Pleistocene. There is as we now know absolutely nothing but an out-of-date hypothesis to indicate that they did not all live there together. We may, if we choose, try to dovetail those conditions into the present on the basis of uniformity and slow secular change, by a.s.suming a few million years for the process, but there is neither a particle of evidence nor of probability that the hippopotamus was not contemporary alike with the palms of the Eocene and the elephants and lions of the post-Tertiary.

As for the mammoth itself, which Flower and Lydekker have intimated may turn out identical with _E. Columbi_ and _E. armeniacus_, and thus the direct ancestor of the modern Asiatic elephant (_E. indicus_), some have argued that its average size was not greater than that of the existing species of India and Africa. But Nicholson says that it was:

"... considerably larger than the largest of living elephants, the skeleton being over sixteen feet in length, exclusive of the tusks, and over nine feet in height."[84]

Dana is equally positive:

"The species was over twice the weight of the largest modern elephant, and nearly a third taller."[85]

The upper incisors or tusks were very much longer than in the modern species, being from ten to twelve feet long, and sometimes curved up and back so as to form an almost complete circle. As these tusks continue to grow throughout life, their enormous length is, I take it, a proof of much greater longevity and thus of greater vitality than in the cases of the modern species. The latter is simply a degenerate.

And so I might go on with the Edentates, the Ungulates, the Rodents, the Carnivores, etc., for the same thing must be said of all.

As Sir William Dawson[86] remarks:

"Nothing is more evident in the history of fossil animals and plants of past geological ages than that =persistence or degeneracy are the rule= rather than the exception.... We may almost say that all things left to themselves =tend to degenerate=, and only a new breathing of the Almighty Spirit can start them again on the path of advancement."

In spite of the long popular views of Cuvier, every modern scientist admits that the great lion and hyena of the Pleistocene are identical with the living species of Africa. Many say the same thing of the fossil bear as compared with the modern brown bear and the grizzly, though, as Dana remarks of all three, lion, hyena, and bear, "these modern kinds are dwarfs in comparison."

I quote again from Dana:

"Thus the brute races of the Middle Quaternary on all the continents exceeded the moderns greatly in magnitude. Why, no one has explained."[87]

This was in 1875. In the last edition of his "Manual," published shortly after his death, he has this to say in addition:

"A species thrives best in the region of fittest climate. =In the Pleistocene, the fittest climate was universal.= Geologists have attributed the extinction of most of the species and the dwindling of others to the cold of the Reindeer epoch. It is the only explanation yet found, though seemingly insufficient for the Americas." (p. 1016.)

However, since the discovery of the pictures of the reindeer and the mammoth drawn and even painted =side by side= on the caverns of Southern France, undoubtedly from life and by the same artist, we do not hear so much about the "Reindeer epoch," and the "Mammoth epoch." A little thought should have suggested long ago that it was more reasonable to suppose the reindeer, glutton, musk-ox, etc., to have been originally adapted to the high mountains and table lands of that ancient world, than to imagine all the fauna careering up and down over continents and across seas like a lot of crazy Scandinavian lemmings, as the migration theory involved. But most geologists seem never to have had any use for mountains or plateaus, except to breed glaciers and continental ice-sheets. But the only point which I wish to insist upon here is that the cause, =whatever it was=, that made such a zoological break at the "close" of the Pleistocene, and which compelled the s.h.i.+vering, degenerate survivors, that could not stand the new extremes of frost and snow, to s.h.i.+ft to the Tropics--this cause was certainly competent to do a good deal more work in the way of "extinction" or "dwindling" of species than the uniformitarians have generally given it credit for.

And in summing up this matter regarding the size and physical development of species, we must confess that we find in geology no indication of inherent progress upward. Variation there is and variation there has been, even "mutations" and "saltations," but with one voice do the rocks testify that the general results of such variation have not been upward. Rather must we confess as a great biological law, that =degeneration has marked the history of every living form=.

FOOTNOTES:

[79] "Manual," p. 487.

[80] pp. 618-9.

[81] _Pop. Sc. News_, May, 1902, p. 106.

[82] Dana, "Manual," p. 761.

[83] "Mammals, etc.," p. 281.

[84] "Ancient Life-History," p. 357.

[85] "Manual," p. 998.

[86] "Modern Ideas of Evolution," Appendix.

[87] "Geol. Story Briefly Told," p. 229.

CHAPTER XII

FOSSIL MEN